Maha, this post has really got me thinking. I love the way that you’ve shifted from tool to hashtag, this has helped me think through my own sense of discomfort or engagement in different conversations. I agree with you, the positioning on any given map (with any given label) isn’t only relative to your own practices in other spaces, but is absolutely framed by the behaviour of others. It’s impossible to conceive of ourselves as visitors, residents, tourists, settlers, colonisers, invaders … without some tacit acknowledgement that this is relative to the other people operating in the same space.

Scott, I’ve been reading Of Hospitality for a couple of years, just keeping it around me and taking in a bit at a time. I have the same instinctive reaction as you to disingenuous or obscuring work, but this one really has opened up a space for me, especially in thinking through how the host and the guest are always the same person. I think this relates directly to the ways in which the practices of others can unsettle our sense of belonging in particular spaces or conversations. I might think of myself as welcome, or at home, while having unintended impact on others.

I would really like to take some time to develop a host/guest map of online practice although it would be difficult to represent precisely because these identities don’t settle, ever.